1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and method for processing a plurality type of input information.
2. Related Background Art
A conventional information processing apparatus having a keyboard, an OCR, an on-line hand-written character recognition unit and a speech recognition unit can generate character information by recognizing key input information, character images on a paper sheet, input hand-written character information, and input speech information. However, such an apparatus defines in advance character information to be generated for each piece of input information, and generates the character information by referring to such definitions. Therefore, it cannot deal with combined inputs from a plurality of input units described above.
Furthermore, the conventional apparatus aims at only acquiring character information of input information. It is therefore impossible to realize natural interaction using natural languages in a manner like peoples can do. An operator is therefore required to always consider the function of each application and the operation method suitable for the function. It is impossible to consider only the contents which result from using each application.